September 2 Peace Talks In Washington, D.C.

When you enter an Arab bazaar you are expected to bargain. Not to do so is almost considered an insult to the Arab trader. More than that it marks you as almost worthless and beneath contempt.

The same attitude exists towards the non-Arab and non-Muslim who enters into negotiations with an Arab interlocutor. If you come seeking genuine negotiations with an open heart and a willingness to make concessions as a tangible expression of your desire to reach an honorable agreement, you are considered a fool and, again, worthy only of contempt. Thus Benjamin Netanyahu comes to Washington, DC in order to sit with Mahmoud Abbas, Chairman of the Palestinian Authority along with the Jordanian Kinglet Abdullah, the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama on September 2, 2010. It will likely be a fatal trap for the Israeli leader.

Predictably, the Arab side will call for pre-conditions even though Netanyahu has been assured by the Obama regime that there will be no such demands permitted. But Abbas, coached by the Arab League, has already demanded that the freeze on Israeli building within parts of Jerusalem be extended throughout all of Jerusalem and within Judea and Samaria (otherwise known as the West Bank by its Jordanian name) and that it must continue indefinitely—by which Abbas means permanently. The crafty bazaar traders know only too well how to bamboozle the innocent non-Arab. Obama will, of course, find an equally duplicitous formula to accept the Arab demand and Israel will be brutally pressured accordingly as it has been time and time again.

And true to type, PA Chief Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), has sent a letter to the Quartet (US, EU, Russia, UN) saying he will abruptly terminate the direct talks with Israel if Israel resumes construction. Here again are shades of the arch-terrorist, Yasser Arafat, walking out of peace agreements as he did before with the degrading image of Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, running behind and begging him to return.

The Americans, mediating the process, did not agree to the PA’s demand to make the talks conditional on an extension of the freeze. Chief PA negotiator and veteran dissembler, Saeb Erekat, acknowledged this recently, but added that the Americans “allowed us to understand that if the direct talks are renewed, it would be easier to persuade Israel to extend the freeze.”

Israel had announced a ten-month freeze on all new Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria nine months ago. It was done in the hope and belief that this would bring the Palestinian Authority to the negotiating table. But 9 months of stagnation passed with the PA refusing to agree to direct talks.

It is only now, as the freeze is about to expire, that the PA has agreed to the talks, while threatening to end them if the building freeze ends. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that the freeze will end on Sept. 26. Israel, for its part, wants any new Arab state that is carved out of Judea and Samaria to be demilitarized and for recognition by the Palestinian Arabs of Israel as the ‘national state of the Jewish people.” It is a remote possibility that either of those demands will be met from the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.

It had been expected that Abbas would pressure Israel regarding the freeze shortly before it expired. Danny Dayan, Secretary-General of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria, said, “I suspect that right before the construction freeze ends six weeks from now, Abu Mazen will agree to direct talks on condition that the freeze be extended—and that will put Netanyahu in a very tight spot.”

There is ample precedent for such Arab double dealing and mendacity. A few weeks after the Oslo agreement was signed between Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn, Arafat, who was the unelected leader of the Palestinian Arabs, went to Johannesburg and in a mosque there made a speech in which he apologized to his fellow Muslims. He said, “Do you think I signed something with the Jews which is contrary to the rules of Islam? That’s not so. I’m doing exactly what the prophet Mohammed did.”

Arafat was reminding his Muslim audience about the deception of Hudabiya. The prophet Mohammed had made an agreement there with the Kuraish tribe of Mecca during which he and his followers would honor a peace treaty for 10 years. But during the period, Mohammed created a veritable army numbering thousands and after a mere two years into the treaty, feeling himself strong enough, he arbitrarily broke it, marched on Mecca, and destroyed the Kuraish tribe, slaughtering the men and enslaving the women.

He did this by manufacturing a flimsy excuse in order to make a surprise attack and thus it has become an article of Muslim faith to break any peace treaty signed with non-Muslims or, as they are called, ‘infidels.’ Hudabiya is thus the Muslim template for all dealings with non-Muslims and Arafat, following Mohammed’s example, broke his agreement with Israel by turning the Oslo Peace into the Oslo War in which thousands of Israeli civilians were slaughtered and maimed.

Norwegian diplomat and United Nations envoy Terje Röd-Larsen, a key player during the Oslo Peace Process in the 1990s, later admitted that “Arafat lied all the time.” Lying to infidels is also a device sanctioned and encouraged in the Koran and the Hadith [sayings of Mohammed]. Nothing changes in the Middle East bazaar. It has always been the same, then as now and now as then.

Israel may well enter into another trap with dire implications for its future. Lies will swirl around during the meeting like cigarette smoke and it is not at all sure that Netanyahu will be able to see clearly what he is agreeing to through the thick and deadly haze.